


this could have been the other way around

by orphan_account



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Jessamine Kaldwin Lives, Marked!Jessamine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:28:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24826825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: (“She was a strange one. Stranger, I think, than you ever knew.” Sokolov’s smile is off-kilter. “But such things are past.”)This is how Jessamine Kaldwin lives.
Relationships: Jessamine Kaldwin & The Outsider
Comments: 10
Kudos: 30





	this could have been the other way around

The sailors read ill fortune in the tides.

People across all of Dunwall whisper that the ocean has turned against them. The whales at Whitecliff have been sighted too early. Whaling trawlers have gone down without a trace. The Lord Protector’s ship was expected to, perhaps, arrive two days early—tomorrow. Now the Royal Physician studies the stormy winds that send waves ten meters high up against the Tower walls with his brow creased deep and eyes squinted tight against the bellowing air, and he shakes his head grimly when asked for estimates. The Lord Protector will not return for another fortnight at least. Dunwall must stutter on alone for a little while longer, sipping the last dredges of hope to soothe their emptying bellies.

Jessamine feels every day a growing chill that wends its way between her ribs, drawing tight and painful like barbed wire and poison-tipped with something she will not name as fear. She is jumping at shadows and she studies her wine as though every glitter may be the Tyvian powder that’s been so popular in the court as of late. She does not need Anton or sailors or the Abbey’s honey-bathed threats to tell her that something terrible is coming.

They all feel it. Emily’s sleep has turned restless ever since Corvo left and she will not calm unless Jessamine stays with her for long hours into the night, when even a child as stubborn as she cannot continue to hold out against her weariness.

Tonight is no different. The clock on the mantle is too shadowed to read, but Jessamine sees the sky outside already beginning to lighten by increments.

Emily’s breaths are deep and even, but she twitches every now and then, whimpers softly. She’s woken already three times since she first slept, and she asks for a story every time. A book of fairy tales lies opened on the bedside table, buried beneath reports and letters and a thousand other things that dance blurrily in front of Jessamine’s eyes, inky letters turning into indistinguishable splotches. She sighs and rubs at her temples. Her sleep has been no easier than Emily’s.

She misses Corvo. She misses a city free of rats and plague, a daughter unbothered by nightmares both in dreaming and waking, and a Parliament that she could at least offer some semblance of trust. She has a Spymaster meant to handle the nobles who seek to dethrone her or worse, and lately he has become stagnant. He gives her little information in his briefings, filling the time instead with useless gossip.

He has never been an excellent Spymaster, not as his predecessor was. Jessamine chose poorly; she freely admits that. But never has Burrows behaved in such a way that is almost outright treasonous. He is hiding things from her.

The question is _what._

Nothing to be done about it, not until she knows more. She’ll have Corvo do some investigating when he gets back. He’s never had any objection to looting private documents and letters from Burrows’s office, or the office of anyone who may be plotting against Jessamine, or the office of _anyone,_ and often he comes away with pockets full of a lot more than paper. She still marvels at the time he returned to her with well over a thousand coin in his pockets, a half-dozen river krust pearls, several extraordinarily rare maps of Pandyssia, and not to mention a small _statue._ How he fit all that into the negligible pockets of the long coat he wears will forever be a mystery.

It brings a smile to her face. It doesn’t last long, but she treasures it. There is not much to smile about these days.

She needs to calm her mind. Her daughter is sleeping well enough for the moment; Jessamine won’t be gone too long, and if Emily does wake alone then the servants will fetch Anton in her stead. Anton is one of only two people who will know where to find her.

She casts aside the reports she was reading. Just more plague statistics.

She doesn’t need reports to tell her that her people are dying. She ventures from the Tower rarely as of late, but she has seen the weepers, the rats, the bodies. Those who aren’t dying of sickness are dying of starvation. The numbers are countless, and they will only continue to grow without a cure. Anton’s Elixir is only an interim solution; it prevents the plague, most of the time, but it cannot stop its progress once the victims have begun to weep blood.

 _You could fix all of this, damn you,_ she thinks to herself, not daring to specify the _you_ here, in her daughter’s bedroom, in the middle of Dunwall Tower itself. All it would take is a maid stumbling in at the wrong moment, and the Abbey could be upon them in an instant.

She goes to _him_ instead.

Few of the lights in the halls are powered at this time of night; it would just be a waste of whale oil, when so few are awake. Jessamine stops by one in a corner, one of the unlit ones, next to an empty fireplace. The glass and wire are cool to the touch when she traces a hand over it, then presses her palm to the backplate and carefully turns it in its socket. It revolves easily; Anton checks the mechanism regularly and keeps all of the hinges well-greased. She glances around briefly, even though she’s already checked the empty halls a dozen times, before slipping under the rising back wall of the fireplace. She flips the lever to close it behind her. It doesn’t hurt to be careful, and her carelessness is how Corvo discovered this room many years ago.

She isn’t… annoyed by that, precisely, at least certainly not ten years too late to do anything about it, but there are things in this room that she prefers him not to know about, and it’s tedious to hide them every time she leaves. After all, how do you explain to your lover that you keep a charm of carved whalebone and wire, the type of artifact that is known to be an item of power carried by heretics? How do you explain that you _are_ one of those heretics?

She doesn’t like hiding this from him. But it was a matter of safety, in the beginning, and it would feel odd to bring it up now; and he would be hurt, as well as he would hide it. She doesn’t worry that he’d judge her for it, though. He knows secrets of hers that are far worse. And he has his own.

She takes the charm from desk, where she’s been leaving it out while he’s away. She drapes the cord it’s strung on around her neck. The effects are immediate.

She nearly sinks to the floor.

Her blood surges in her veins, fast and brutal and almost painful, boundless as a rushing river and all-encompassing like a tidal wave. She doesn’t know what this does, not exactly. She certainly can’t explain it. All she knows is that she feels more alive when she wears this. She feels as though she could take a sword through her gut and _survive._ Her lifeblood is plentiful, her bones strengthened. The feeling is beyond intoxicating.

She doesn’t wear it outside of this room. Never, not once. it would be complete folly, and it’s unnecessary, besides. She has Corvo to protect her. Except… now she doesn’t.

She hesitates, calls herself an idiot, and tucks the charm into her shirt.

A fortnight, Anton said. She can hide it for a fortnight, Abbey be damned. It’s not like the Overseers will investigate her without severe provocation; she’s run the Empire for twelve years without blatantly exposing her heresy. A fortnight is nothing.

“Some would call that overconfidence, dear Empress,” says a voice, cold and even like smooth stone. “But it’s not, is it? You know exactly what you are capable of.”

“Yes,” she says, and looks up. Of course he’s sitting atop the cabinet. She has a strong suspicion that he just likes to feel tall.

He studies her, expression unreadable. “And yet you fail to realize that you could be capable of so much more.”

The Void has flooded in around them. There are no windows in this room, not in the living world, but here it is fractured apart. There are cracks in the walls, both hairline and larger ones like jagged puzzle pieces gaping wide enough for her to slip through. The world has turned whale-oil blue and everything she sees is tinted by it. She grabs onto a wall and sticks her head out of a crack, peering into the brilliant endlessness down below. “What do you mean by that? What more am I capable of? I hold the highest position in all of the Isles; unless you’re inviting me to take your place somehow, which, no thank you. I’m rather fond of being chained to this mortal coil.”

“You could have power,” the Outsider says. “True power. If only you were interesting to me.”

That actually stings a little. She turns to scowl at him jokingly, unbothered by the tar-black eyes that stare back at her. “I really wonder, sometimes, why it is that I put up with you. You show up whenever you want to, more often than not put me in situations that are difficult to explain and end with Corvo asking awkward questions, and then you call me boring – and as far as I can recall, you’ve never actually done something nice for me.”

“What would you want from me, Empress?” he asks. He sounds serious, and she finds herself sobering as well. “Others to whom I grant my favor have requests of me. Even the proudest of men have begged on their knees for my gifts; and yet you are content.”

“I am not,” she says. “My people are suffering.”

“But you do not ask me to help them.”

“I already know what your answer would be,” she says, words sharp-edged. “That you cannot influence human life, which is as great a lie as you have ever told – and no one has ever believed you.”

He inclines his head. “You see things in black and white, Empress, when there are far more shades to it than that. I offer, to a chosen few, the abilities with which to change their lives, even change the course of history; and indirectly, you may consider me to have made those changes. But the decisions are not mine. The blame is not mine.”

“Am I one of those chosen few?” she asks idly. She tires of looking into the Void and climbs up onto the cabinet beside him. She thinks, for a moment, about trying to shove him off. But he would probably just float.

He considers her question. “Perhaps.”

She half-grins at him, though bitterness still chokes her throat. “But I thought I wasn’t interesting to you?”

“You are not interesting,” he says, “but you are… different, enough so to hold my attention. Few monarchs would be so daring as to worship the very entity that the official religious faction of their government considers to be humankind’s devils incarnate.”

“I do _not_ worship you, and the Abbey means nothing to me. I ought to disband it, and damn the consequences. They cause far more trouble than they’re worth.”

“It is irrelevant.”

She supposes that it is. “Very well. Why are you here, in any case?”

He disintegrates abruptly, and reappears at the foot of the cabinet. He offers a hand to help her down. “Walk with me,” he tells her in lieu of answering. She takes his hand and finds his skin to be cool; not cold enough to feel too odd, but it is something like trailing your fingertips over the surface of the water on a pleasant summer’s day. The Outsider is solid enough, but there is a knowledge inherent in touching him that he could at any moment flow away. He is not a person, not quite. _God_ comes close. Ocean, she thinks, comes closest.

He brushes the walls aside with a gesture, and a cobblestone path forms before them. She offers him her arm, and he takes it with an almost-smile. She almost-smiles back.

In moments like these, she thinks perhaps that she could call him _friend._

They walk for a while before he speaks, and when he does, his voice has lost its usual evenness. It is more like listening to chunks of ice grind together. “There is something at odds in your world, Empress. Your Protector should have been returned to you tomorrow. I saw no time or place where he did not – and yet here we are.” He stops, and turns to face her. “Your life will take a turn, soon. There are great trials ahead of you. And so there is something I will give to you.”

Uneasiness shivers up her spine, so strongly that she feels dizzied. The strength leaves her legs and she nearly collapses; the Outsider catches her arms and steadies her until the weakness passes. She tries to speak, but her throat is dry and she coughs, instead.

He cups her cheek, for a beat of her heart, and then he grasps her left hand with both of his.

“I am the Outsider,” he says, “and this is my Mark.”

She wakes in her own bed, still wearing the previous day’s clothes. She is soaked in sweat. She moves to sit up, and finds herself retching with pain when she jars her hand against the mattress. The Mark is still seared into her flesh as if it were pressed there with a hot iron. She has often supervised the sentencing of an Overseer to the Heretic’s Brand; she knows exactly what the effects of such a wound look like, and she knows, too, how their screams ring impossibly loud in her ears for days afterward.

She does not scream. She does not make a sound at all, even though she has never felt such pain as this before.

There were tests for her, in the Void last night, challenges to run and leap and _fold_ the space between herself and her destination. The power is exhilarating and nauseating. The images she saw were worse. Frozen figures like statues, and all of them afraid. Emily, balancing on the edge of the highest point of a lighthouse; Corvo, eyes weary and hands bloodied, kneeled before a man whose face was shadowed; a man in a long red coat, blade raised but eyes hesitant; and someone that Jessamine has not seen in many, many years. Cold eyes, a face like carved granite, clothes woven of the earth itself, and a blue-tipped paintbrush in her hand. Older than Jessamine knew her, but still recognizable.

Delilah.

There is a reason that Delilah was there along with the others, and Jessamine fears that her past is coming back to haunt her. Void, there have been so many secrets. There is the Outsider’s Mark displayed plainly on her hand, now; not everyone will recognize it, but enough will, and most of them are not allies. She can wear gloves, but for how long will that be a solution? People will talk. People will wonder.

The Abbey is full of scum, but they are not fools. They have dealt with heretics before. Previously, they have had no reason to suspect Jessamine; and now, with something so simple as a covered left hand, they will have plenty.

There is nothing to be done about it now. Dawn is approaching. She has duties to attend to.

She tears a piece of linen from a towel and wraps it around her left hand in a makeshift bandage. It is only a temporary solution, but it’s better than nothing. She opens her mouth to call for her maidservant – Leitha – but finds herself pausing, voice hovering in her throat.

She may not find another chance until nightfall comes again – and oh, she cannot deny that she is curious.

She takes a deep breath, and clenches her fist.

The Mark on the back of her hand _bursts_ to life, flaring brilliant gold and royal blue like the colors of the Kaldwin House, so bright that it shines clearly through the linen bandage. It burns, painful and powerful and limitless. She closes her fist tighter, and reaches out the way the Outsider showed her; with not only her body, but with her sight, her _mind—_

She reaches out and _folds,_ pulls together two spaces like the clasping of a cufflink, and the path between twists and shimmers as though struck by a heatwave.

And then she is on the other side of the room.

It’s like a drug. She finds herself _folding_ space again and again, until she collapses against her desk in exhaustion, grinning like a child who’s learned to dance. It is beyond incredible. It is madness, but she loves it.

It grows near daylight, and finally she concedes that she must stop. She changes into fresh trousers and a shirt, and calls for her maidservant. Leitha appears quickly enough, but her expression quickly grows concerned when she sees the bandage.

“I injured it,” Jessamine says in explanation, and jerks her hand away when Leitha’s expression turns concerned and the woman tries to peek beneath the cloth. “No! No – thank you, I will ask the Royal Physician to take a look at it later today.” She won’t. Anton would know exactly what this Mark is, and he would feel beyond betrayed that Jessamine was Marked by the god whose favor he has so coveted; not to mention the fact that _she has been meeting the Outsider off and on for her entire life,_ and has failed to mention it.

It’s not something that she’s planning on ever telling him about. They keep few secrets from each other, and this must be one of them. She does not ask about the test subjects he experiments on or the associations he has outside of the royal family. He does not ask about the extent of her heresy. He would be a hypocrite, anyway.

She feels a sudden flicker of guilt, so strong that she flinches.

He is her friend. Her closest friend. And yet now she finds himself thinking of him as her enemy; in terms of secrets given and hidden, weaknesses and strengths. He is not a good man, she knows, but he is _not_ her enemy.

“Your Majesty?” Leitha asks hesitantly. “Is everything alright? Are you feeling well?”

“Yes, of course,” Jessamine says. “Just… just tired.”

Leitha smiles sympathetically as she buttons up Jessamine’s cuffs, and folds her collar more neatly than Jessamine has ever managed in her life. “We all are, I suppose. These are tiring times. But everyone believes in you, Your Majesty, the people do, and we know you’ll lead us out of it alright. You are a brave and wise empress. I’ve—I’ve always really looked up to you, actually.” She flushes. “I hope it’s alright for me to say that.”

Jessamine feels something light in her heart. Not happiness, but it gladdens her in some way. “It is more than alright. I appreciate it, Leitha.”

Leitha beams at that, and holds out a velvet jacket, indicating for Jessamine to put her arms through the sleeves. It’s the same song and dance as they do every morning. Today, more than ever, Jessamine finds herself comforted by it.

She greets the day with trepidation, but also a spark of hope. And the day rises to the occasion. The 18th Day of the Month of Earth dawns bright and clear, sunlight at last breaking through the numb gray-blue that has invaded the city since Corvo left. It is a beautiful day. It is the day that Corvo should have come _home._

 _Your life will take a turn, soon,_ the Outsider said.

Her limbs grow heavy with dread as the hours pass and her hope trickles away. There is a deep uneasiness in the pit of her stomach that makes her want to double over when she walks, and it takes effort not to even slouch as she takes the morning’s audiences in the throne room. She cannot focus at all. Perhaps she _should_ see Anton for a general check-up later on, if she can manage it whilst diverting him from the bandage on her hand; it may just be anxiety afflicting her, or it may be a real illness. Maybe… no. It could not be the plague. That would certainly be the kind of terrible turn that the Outsider would find noteworthy, but she refuses to consider that possibility. There are many other ailments that could be troubling her, and it won’t hurt to check in with Anton. For all that he grumbles when he’s interrupted in his work to improve the Elixir, he has never denied her his time. He has eased her mind many times in the past months.

She is glad he is here today; it fortifies her to see him near, even if it must be in the presence of that foul High Overseer, Campbell. Without thinking she itches surreptitiously beneath her bandage.

 _He’s not actually watching me,_ she tries to reassure herself, but she could swear that his eyes track her every movement.

When Anton heads outdoors to paint Campbell, she follows; as much as she loathes Campbell and as foolish as it is to remain in his company longer than necessary, she is more reluctant to lose the nearness of a friend right now. “I’ll take your afternoon briefing in the gazebo,” she informs Burrows, and ignores his protests. He tails after her reluctantly, although she sees him stop to speak to a young man in a long blue coat. She only catches a few snatches of what they say: _tell him_ and _must change our plans._

She keeps an extra-close eye on Burrows thereafter. He can clearly tell that she’s wary of him – by the end of the briefing, his expression is trying to be vexed but appears nearer to a nervous breakdown.

He seems unnervingly calm, though, when he suggests blockading the lower districts. The plague is rampant. It could spread the Estate District – to the Tower itself. Servants have already been going missing. If things continue this way then it’s only a matter of time before the sickness takes the court, as well, and an empress will do no good for her Empire if she is weeping blood from the eyes.

“It is all for your safety, and your safety alone,” Burrows assures her. “When Sokolov discovers a cure, we would, of course, reopen the districts. I fully understand your distaste for this solution; indeed, I share it, but we have few options. I think it is best to eliminate the threat."

“They’re sick people, not criminals,” she says sharply. Half-disbelievingly. Is he truly so unsympathetic to the people’s suffering?

“We’ve gone beyond that question, your Majesty. They’re—"

She cuts him off, uncaring whether he’ll think her rude. “They’re my citizens, and we will save them from the plague if we can. All of them.” What he’s suggested is beyond monstrous; he can’t genuinely think she would have agreed to it? No, impossible; she has ruled the Empire of the Isles for twelve years, disagreeing with him for every step of the way. There is a reason he has suggested this. A distraction, possibly? _Why?_ A distraction from what?

“Very well,” he acquiesces too easily, proving her concerns to be true – or at least not far from the mark.

“We will not speak of this again,” she says, eyes narrowing. It’s a dismissal.

Burrows is too proud of a man to take a dismissal easily; and now there is a pleased twist to the curve of his mouth as he bows and leaves her side. “Let us leave the Empress to her solitude,” she hears him say to the guard at the top of the steps.

“No,” she calls out, acting on instinct. “Remain. Lord Spymaster, will you ask the High Overseer to join me, please? Anton as well.”

Burrows looks outright _furious_ as he stumbles to create an excuse. “Your Majesty, I don’t believe that’s necessary – that is – I only wish to think of our esteemed High Overseer, who agreed to dedicate his sparse free time so that Sokolov might immortalize him in art for our citizens to wonder at for years to come, to remind them of their faith, to _strengthen_ it. It is of the greatest importance. Why not let Sokolov finish his work as soon as possible? Then, I am sure, they will be eager to receive your summons. But there is no rush, now, is there?”

By the end of this brief, blatantly-panicked speech, Burrows’s anger has smoothed over some; he smiles unconvincingly. It’s the purest rubbish that Jessamine has ever heard spoken aloud.

She opens her mouth to speak, and notices that his gaze has zeroed in on something behind her. She turns.

She does not quite register her own shock until she feels a wracking gasp leave her mouth, forceful and almost painful, as though all of the air in her lungs has been torn bodily away. She watches a man disintegrate into thin air like ashes and reappear only meters away from her; two men, now. No, three; they are joined by a man in a red coat much like Campbell’s, who comes into being like shadows and light coalescing, like Death has taken two legs and walked to her with a blade in hand. She sees the Mark glowing through the red-coated man’s glove.

He is the man from the Void. The one with a blade not yet fallen, but regret already written into the lines of his face. There is something familiar about him, though, beyond that; as if—she’s seen him before, seen his face.

Outsider’s eyes! Of course he’s familiar. She ordered a bounty of five thousand coins placed upon his head.

“Assassins, Lord Spymaster?” she breathes without turning around, gritting her teeth and forcing back a paralyzing combination of terror and fury. “You’d stoop so low? I'd have thought you’d at least pour the poison yourself.”

Burrows makes a choked noise. “No—you _bitch!_ ” he snarls. “You will not ruin this for me! What are you _waiting_ for, Daud?”

“Nothing,” the Knife of Dunwall growls, and lifts his hand. The next thing Jessamine knows there is green light surrounding her and lifting her, rendering her unable to do anything but flail in thin air. Her limbs are locked and seizing. He pins her against a pillar.

“No,” she gasps out, and his blade drives home. She feels every centimeter of metal sliding into her gut.

He releases her, and she falls.

She has fallen onto this cold stone before. Often, as a child. She stood back up just as easily. And now she finds that when her knees strike the marble, the pain is a thousand times magnified. She trembles, brings her hands to her stomach. The blood bubbles out between her fingertips and stains the bandage on her hand. There is a scream in her ears, sounding muffled, torn. Emily’s voice.

She hears it distantly. But she does hear it.

“No,” she says hoarsely. “No, not Emily. You can’t— _please—_ ”

Daud seems to hesitate for a moment before he turns away and disintegrates. She doesn’t see where he appears next. Burrows is in her line of sight now, crouching down before her with a gleeful expression on his face.

“Yes, Empress,” he says, gentle in an oily, sickly-sweet sort of way. “I’m afraid that I can. You won’t live to see what happens to her, anyway.”

“Think again, you bastard,” she grits out between her teeth, even though she has no plan whatsoever.

“Now, now, Empress,” Campbell says, joining them at the worst possible time. “There’s no need to be rude, you know. I believe we’ve been quite fair to you, in all honesty. The Lady Emily isn’t dead, and your death will be quick. Would you have preferred to have been dishonored to your people? The Spymaster could have fabricated proof that you were blackmailing Parliament, or something like that. Really, this was the kindest option. You are behaving very ungratefully.”

The bone charm beneath her shirt is burning like the Mark did, scorching her skin. She wonders if that is why she is not dead yet. If the increased life in her body is what has saved her. How long will it hold off her death? How long until Burrows and Campbell tire of watching her cling to life?

She closes her eyes, feeling her body beginning to grow sluggish. But the Mark surges the same as before. It is not weakened.

If there was ever a time to reveal her heresy, it is now.

She closes her fist and _folds_. The space between her and the courtyard where Emily was playing is gone in an instant. She hears shouts of shock and horror behind her. She stumbles up from her knees, grimly hoping that her insides won’t spill out of the hole in her gut, and presses down on the wound harder until she wants to scream. She looks around. Emily is gone; she didn’t expect otherwise, not really, but Void help her, she _hoped…_

“Jessamine, my old friend,” Anton says, voice hollow. “What is happening? Where is Lady Emily?”

She takes a harsh breath. “I don’t know, Anton.”

She turns to look at him, and can’t help but plead, “Tell me you didn’t know what they were planning. Please, tell me you didn’t know. Swear it to me.”

His face morphs into confusion. “Didn’t know what?”

She is out of time. The guards have spotted her and are racing towards her – traitors, all of them. She is dying and her daughter has been kidnapped and her empire has been torn from her hands as easily as taking candy from a child. She has been so oblivious.

“Take care of yourself,” she says to Anton, and _folds_ space again. She is in the waterlock. The engineers stare at her wide-eyed. She forces her legs to move, staggers onto a balcony.

Her eyesight is growing blurry. She _folds,_ aiming for a boat.

She plunges into the water instead, and the impact sends her down deep. Water rushes into her mouth. She tries desperately to swim towards the surface, but her legs and arms move in useless, short jerky movements. Her body is growing heavier with the water in her lungs. Her mind jumps and fuzzes and crackles like one of Anton’s Walls of Light – she can’t gather together a coherent thought.

She isn’t sure which way is up anymore; it all looks the same. Even considering it is dizzying. There are growing black spots in her vision.

Her eyes slip closed, and she drifts.

Dimly, like sensing someone else’s dream through her own dream, she feels something grasp her arm and pull her through the water. The feeling of matter around her changes suddenly; air, she thinks it might be, biting cold with the wind – but she can’t inhale any of it, doesn’t think she knows how to. She feels herself being set down on a solid surface, her head gently tilted back.

Hands press down on her chest, hard. She feels a jolt of sharp pain in her ribs. The hands return, and the pain with them. Again. Again. Again. She loses track.

There is an odd sensation in her nose, as though someone has pinched it. A mouth fits over hers and forces breath down her throat. The mouth leaves and returns. Then the hands on her chest, and she tries to cough, feebly. Moves her hand, a little, tries to—

The hands turn her over onto her side and she is throwing up, salty brine gushing from her mouth and her nose, burning her throat and her insides all over.

And then she has no more energy left. She is as powerless to control her body or sense her surroundings as a newborn kitten. She feels herself trembling and shivering so violently that her entire body aches, and terrible, fractured moments pass like that until her eyes close again and she feels nothing at all.

She wakes in an attic, sunshine pouring in the windows thrown wide open and a cool breeze stirring the air. Her throat is dry as a desert and her torso is wound tight with bandages. And, also, it _hurts._

Her eyes feel gritty. She blinks, trying to clear her vision.

“Well, would you look at that, Samuel,” says a woman sitting by her bedside, voice wry and stern. Her expression is annoyed, but it softens around the edges of her smile. Her clothes are simple but clean and crisp. She reminds Jessamine of her old tutors. “Turns out she’s not dead. Who knew?”

“I never doubted your ability to help her, miss,” says an old man standing behind her. His voice is gentler, kinder, and there’s a wide grin on his wrinkled face.

“Hello, Your Majesty,” he adds after a moment. “I’m Samuel, and this is Lydia.”

“I can introduce myself, you know,” Lydia says curtly. She stands and bobs an awkward curtsy, head bowed. “Lydia Brooklaine, Your Majesty.”

“Uhhh,” Jessamine says, not very coherently, “nice to meet you?”

Her voice rasps like sandpaper and it sounds more like a question. Lydia doesn’t seem to mind.

“Why am I here? What’s happened?”

“A lot,” Lydia says, tone turning grim. “Samuel here found you half-drowned in the river. You’ve since been declared a fugitive on crimes of heresy and attempted murder of the new Lord Regent, Hiram Burrows. You’re to be turned into the City Watch or killed on sight. The Lord Protector, when he returns, will be put on trial to see if he was involved with your crimes. And the Lady Emily is missing.”

“Oh, is that all,” Jessamine says mindlessly, because sarcasm is and has always been her coping mechanism. (People seem to find that surprising, usually.) There is a dullness spreading in her mind and in her body.

Lydia leans forward and looks her dead in the eye. “Your Majesty. Focus. It’s going to be alright.”

“Right,” Jessamine says weakly. Oh, _Emily._ “I’m sure it will be.” She swallows. “So – so why are you helping me, then? You’ll be punished, if you’re found to be harboring me.”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Samuel says, making it sound like the simplest thing in the world. Maybe it is. Jessamine has grown too used to the twisting-and-turning schemes of the court. “And it’s not just us who thinks so. The Admiral – begging your pardon, that is, the Admiral Farley Havelock – he’s here to help, too, and some others. I don’t know how you’re going to get your throne back, it’s all above my head, but I’ll serve you to the best of my ability, Your Majesty, if you’ve any use for a creaky old boatman.”

Jessamine feels tears prickling at her eyes. Such loyalty is… unexpected, right now. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “I will endeavor to be worthy of your faith in me.”

Their help isn’t much. But it’ll do. They’ll manage, somehow. They’ll get a message to Corvo, when he gets back, and they’ll rescue Emily. But first, Jessamine must heal. First, she must _plan._ Burrows and Campbell will pay dearly for their betrayal of her.

“Can I have some water?” she asks, and Lydia nods and goes to get it.

“I’ll leave you to get your rest, Your Majesty,” Samuel says, and bows awkwardly and follows Lydia out of the room.

Jessamine studies the bared Mark on her hand. She closes her fist and it flares bright as ever.

Whatever comes… she’ll be ready.

**Author's Note:**

> inspiration for this fic came from a few sources... the idea came from the line in the summary, Sokolov's line in the Loyalists that is, and also the fact that there's a bone charm in Jessamine's secret room. I also took inspiration for the title of this fic from that one scene in Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance... and Jessamine's version of Blink is based on gateways from the Wheel of Time.


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